In its quest for $20 a share, IBM sheds jobs

IBM, in the midst of its massive transformation from a hardware-and-software-and-services company to a cloud-and-services company, is cutting jobs worldwide. The goal, besides remaking the 103-year-old tech giant into a modern IT leader that can take on Amazon Web Services and a flock of younger tech vendors, is to deliver on the promise to deliver $20 (non-GAAP) earnings per share by the end of 2015. Accomplishing that goal would be quite the feat, given the past few quarters of disappointing performance.

For IBM’s fourth quarter ending December 31, earnings — excluding some items — hit $6.13 per share, exceeding estimates of $6.00, according to Bloomberg. The trouble lay in revenue, which dipped for the seventh consecutive quarter — to $27.7 billion, missing estimates of $28.3 billion.

As for the job cuts, it’s not as if IBM didn’t warn us. On last month’s Q4 earnings call, CFO Martin Shroeter said IBM had reserved $1 billion to cover workforce reductions. Estimating that each person laid off costs IBM about $70,000, Sanford Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi told USA Today the company could cut 10,000 to 15,000 workers out of a total headcount of about 400,000.

Lee Conrad, a former IBMer who is now the national coordinator of Alliance@IBM, a watchdog group affiliated with a union of IBM workers, said he is hearing of job cuts in several countries, the largest seemingly in India. “Reports from angry IBM India workers started flooding into the Alliance website 3 days ago,” he said via email on Thursday. “Hardest hit was the Systems Technology Group. Today we are hearing of job cuts in IBM India Software Group.”

The Alliance’s latest, admittedly incomplete list includes 1,500 jobs cut in Brazil, 600 in Argentina, 480 in France, 430 in Italy, 240 in the Netherlands and 105 in Belgium. Cuts in European countries must be negotiated, so the numbers could change, Conrad said.

“It’s important to look at what IBM is doing holistically. It’s jettisoning anything that’s not cloud or Internet of Things,” said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. And yes, he acknowledged, the company needs to hit that magical $20 EPS number as well.

I’ve reached out to IBM for comment and will update this report as needed. An IBM spokesman reaffirmed what IBM said it in it’s earnings call — that

“IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients …. and positioning itself to lead in areas such as Cloud, Analytics and Cognitive Computing and investing in these priority areas.”

IBM’s former CEO Sam Palmisano delivered that $20-per-share pledge in May of 2010 and now it’s up to his successor, Ginni Rometty, to deliver on it. All I can say is: Poor Ginni.

Note: this story was updated at 7:25 a.m. and again at 8:22 a.m. PST February 14 with analyst comment and IBM comments.